


Organization Man

by perletwo



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: ccbingo, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:03:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perletwo/pseuds/perletwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson keeps his work space in meticulous order. That's no easy task when he's the handler to a sniper who generates his own personal chaos field.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Organization Man

**Author's Note:**

> Done for the ccbingo nonsexual intimacy prompt "sharing storage space for personal possessions."

Specialist Clint Barton ambled into Agent Phil Coulson’s office without knocking and dropped unceremoniously onto his battered sofa. He groaned piteously.

“Barton.” Coulson’s tone was neutral and he didn’t look up from the pile of papers and office supplies he was sorting into sub-piles atop his desk. “What is it this time?”

“They’re dinging me for the cost of arrow shafts,” Clint mumbled darkly.

Coulson dumped one of the piles into one of four bins set up at the side of his desk, this one for return to the supply department. He dropped a stack of papers into a bin destined for incineration, and then looked up.

“You keep splitting the shafts making double- and triple-bullseyes, and down the line somebody is going to get pissed eventually,” he said.

“Yeah, but it ain’t _you,_ ” Clint retorted, and shifted a throw pillow behind his head.

“No, not this time.” Phil eyed another pile of twisted paper clips, twist ties, mangled binder clips and similarly damaged items, then swept it up and dropped it all in the regular wastebasket. “My money’s on whoever has to fill out the requisitions for new ones. Or whoever has to cut the checks to the supplier.” He rifled through another stack of papers, found a file folder to contain it, and forced it into a bottom drawer.

“But you’ll take care of it. Right?” Barton lifted his head, smile winning.

Another stack of papers went into a bin marked for shredding, and Phil looked up from dropping various small items into the top desk drawer. “It’s not an unreasonable position for them to take. It would teach you a lesson about the William Tell theatrics, and taking proper care of your toys. It’s also not, technically, my department. So tell me why I should take care of it?”

“Because.” Clint sat up. “Arrow shafts are a valid operational expense. Trick shots are part of the skill set that has to be maintained, and I’m better at the job than anyone else they got. ‘Cause you know I already take exceptionally good care of what you wanna call my toys – better’n I do anything I actually own. And because you’re my handler. Handling any of life’s minor annoyances that might pull my focus from my job’s part of _your_ job. And you do your job better’n anyone else they got.”

“True enough.” Phil bent double and lifted a thin flat box from the knee-hole of his desk and set it on the working surface. From it he removed an odd, asymmetrical grid of compressed wood pieces, examined it and smiled.

“Good! I knew you’d see it my way.” Clint tilted his head. “What the flippin’ hell are you doing over there anyway?”

“Cleaning out my desk,” he replied, and Clint blanched.

“Cleaning – you’re not -”

Phil looked up sharply. “What? No! No, of course I’m not. This is just routine maintenance. I needed to clear some space in my desk, that’s all.”

He opened a midsized drawer halfway down the right-hand side of the knee hole, gloriously empty, and pulled a bleach wet-wipe from a canister to wipe down the interior. Tossing that, he lifted the wooden grid and fitted it neatly into the drawer, creating divided compartments.

Phil smiled and began shifting the last remaining oddments from his desk into the drawer: a bottle of gun oil, a few fletches, arrowheads in various degrees of sharpness, a Leatherman multitool, a miniature digital scale, a roll of zip line, and a half-flattened squeeze tube of sunscreen.

Clint sat up straighter and leaned forward, peering into the drawer. “Waitaminit.”

“What?” Phil busied himself flattening the drawer divider’s cardboard box and wiping dust and lint off the top of his desk with a tissue.

“That’s – I think that’s -” He rose, walked over to examine the newly cleaned desk drawer. “This is all _my_ stuff.”

“Yes, Barton,” Phil said with exaggerated patience. “So much of it keeps finding its way into my office from these little visits you like to pay me at the end of shift that I found I needed a place for it.”

“You cleaned me out a desk drawer.” Clint couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face. “Coulson, that’s…” He lifted his hands, speechless.

“Doesn’t mean we’re going steady, Specialist,” Phil said gruffly, eyes on the items in the drawer. “Just means I’ve got a low tolerance for clutter, that’s all. Now clear out of here before I change my mind about those arrow shafts.”

Clint was now both beaming and pinking up in the cheeks. “Sir. Yes sir.” He threw Phil a mocking salute on his way out the door.

Phil kept his gaze on the desk drawer until the door was firmly shut behind Barton and his footfalls faded away. Then he closed the drawer, rested his elbows on the desk and his head in his hands.

“I am so screwed,” he muttered under his breath. “‘Going steady?’ _Jesus._ ”


End file.
